Whenever there is an authoritarian coup rooted in an irrational ideology, well-meaning people insist that it can’t persist because the results are going to be so obviously bad for the people who believe in it, whether it’s the theocratic revolution in Iran or the first truly autocratic Administration in America. Tragically, terribly, this is never the way it works. There is no political cost for Trump in being seen to be incompetent, impulsive, shallow, inconsistent, and contemptuous of truth and reason.

* “Sex and Art in 1950s Manhattan: Patricia Bosworth’s life was a dramatic saga of ambition, sex, affairs and abortion. She reveals it all in The Men in My Life.” The review is good but makes me feel like I don’t need to read the book itself.